Chapter XXVII: The House of Invocation

Paul related that after sunset on the preceding evening he had sought that remarkable cavern or den, which lies at the base of Benvenue.

It is a deep and circular hollow in the side of the mountain, about six hundred yards wide at the top, but narrows steeply towards the bottom, on all sides surrounded by stupendous masses of shattered rock, covered so thickly with wild birches that their interlaced branches almost intercept the sunlight even at noon.

For ages, local superstition has made this place the abode of the Urisks, wild shaggy men, or lubber-fiends, who were fashioned like the ancient satyrs, being half-men and half-goats; thus their very name was fraught with many indescribable terrors, and hence the spot was avoided by the most hardy huntsmen, even at mid-day.

There Paul had repaired as the night was closing in, carrying with him, instead of his cross-staff, the blade of an ancient sword without a hilt, and a black cat securely tied in a bag.

Selecting the very centre of the coir, or hollow, he drew a circle three times round him with the sword-blade, and collecting a quantity of dry branches, dead leaves, and moss, he added some pieces of coffin-boards, brought from his remarkable hut in Strathfillan, and lighted a fire. Amid the growing flames he thrust the sword-blade firmly into the earth, with the point uppermost.

Then he drew from the bag the fated cat, the paws of which were securely tied with a cord. As the increasing flames rose fast, he thrust the poor animal upon the upright sword, impaling it alive, the supposed necessity of the ordeal rendering Paul completely callous and heedless of the cruelty he was perpetrating.

Then the shrill cries of the tortured cat woke a thousand echoes among the rocks of that ghastly hollow, while it spat and bit at the steel on which its blood was dripping to hiss on the fire below. Its jaws were distended, and its protruding eyes glared like opals in the light; its ears were laid flat, and every hair was bristling with fear and agony, till scorched off by the rising flames.

Their lurid light cast strange and fantastic gleams on the rocks of that solemn hollow; and when in the moaning night wind the birches waved their drooping branches to and fro, the whole place seemed to fill with moving figures of quaint and unearthly aspect.

As the yells of the tortured cat woke them up, sharp-nosed foxes peeped forth from their holes with glittering eyes, fleet squirrels scampered up the trees, and the birds screamed and whirred in flocks out of the hollow; but fast and furiously there gathered from all quarters cats, wild and domestic; over the bushes and rocks they came swarming, as if to the rescue, with open mouths, protruding eyes, extended claws, and backs erect; but they were compelled to pause, being unable to enter the charmed circle, or it might be perhaps that the glare of the fire terrified or bewildered them.

Cats in countless numbers--black, white, grey, and brindled--covered all the rocks of the Coir nan Uriskin, according to Paul, denouncing in fury the torment of their companion, till their spitting and hissing sounded like the rush of a waterfall; for though many of these sudden visitors were of the common size and kind, many more were the wild cats of the mountains, which are four times larger than the domestic, with yellow coats, black streaks, thick flat tails, and are armed with claws and teeth well calculated to inspire terror.

Then as the branches of the trees waved to and fro, their shadows on the weather-beaten rocks seemed more distinctly to assume the strange form, the quaint and savage faces of the terrible Urisks, that glimmered and jabbered at these unhallowed proceedings. But the resolute Paul continued to mutter,--

See not this!
Hear not that!
Round with the spit,
And turn the cat!

So he never looked about him nor quailed in his grim work, for he knew that greater terrors would yet surround him ere the fiend he was summoning would appear. For if the _Gluasa-leabhra_ came to the rescue of his tortured subject--this terrible king of the cats, distinguished from all others of the mountain by his tiger-like proportions and wondrous strength--Paul knew that _then_ would be the critical moment of his fate; for if his heart failed him on hearing the yell of this half-cat, half-demon, he must be overborne by the whole living mass, which now covered the sides of the Coir nan Uriskin; his body would be rent into a thousand pieces, and the _future_ of Clan Alpine would never be learned!

The midnight air was growing dense and sulphurous; gleams of lightning began to play about the bleak summit of Benvenue, and the deep thunder grumbled in the distance. Drops of hot rain were falling heavily too; but Paul felt them not, for his heart leaped within him as he shouted,--

"Wretch, come forth! He is coming!--he is coming!"

The poor cat impaled upon the sword-blade was expiring now; half-roasted alive, its eyeballs yet protruded from their sockets; surcharged with blood, they had become red as rubies, and its mouth opened and shut spasmodically.

White as milk or thistle-down, Paul's long and tangled hair glittered in the wavering fire-light and in the livid gleams that shot athwart the sky; but still he tossed his skeleton arms aloft, and whirled the dying cat upon the sword-blade with a piece of burning brand.

In their sunken sockets Paul's eyeballs blazed like burning coals, for every moment he expected to see the trembling earth open, and the unchained fiend appear before him; but the rocks of the Coir nan Uriskin trembled by no demoniac spell, but with the boom of the pealing thunder alone.

Suddenly there was a splitting roar and a dreadful crash; a blinding sheet of livid flame filled the whole hollow; for a moment the wet rocks seemed to sparkle like masses of crystal, and the trees were seen to toss and twist wildly upward their rending branches in the blast. Then all became darkness and all silence, save when the thunder of the midnight storm grumbled in the distance far away.

A thunderbolt had struck the rocks of the hollow; Paul became senseless, and remembered no more till morning dawned, when he found himself lying near a thunder-riven rock in the Coir nan Uriskin amid the ashes of his extinguished fire, and close by him the charred remains of his victim still impaled by the sword-blade.

The adventures of the night--how much of these were true and how much were _fancy_ the reader may easily determine--had sorely exhausted the strength of this strange old man, to whose narrative Rob Roy listened with astonishment, not unmingled with alarm, for the scene of his spells was fraught with innumerable terrors.

"Thus, MacGregor, I have sinned and perilled my soul for nothing," groaned Paul, closing his eyes, as if in exhaustion; "I have invoked in vain, and in vain has the terrible ordeal of the Tighghairm been undergone!"

"If all this be true, Paul, you were near rousing the devil to little purpose. For had he told you that we would be victorious, we would fight; if defeated and dispersed, _still_ would we fight, till the last of us was gathered to his fathers. So for true tidings of the enemy I would rather trust to the lass Oina than to your devilish cantrips."

"You would trust in a woman?" said Paul, disdainfully.

"She can reckon every redcoat in Inversnaid as well as you or I could do, Paul."

"What said St. Colme of Iona? 'Where there is a cow there will be a woman, and where there is a woman there will be _mischief_; so neither one nor the other ever set foot on the Isle of the Waves in _his_ time.'"

"An ungallant speech," said Rob, laughing.

"But a true one. Pause and consider well, for a son of Fortune waits and attains his end in peace; but the luckless hastens on unadvisedly, and evil befalls him."

"Dioul!" said the other, with knitted brow; "I am no son of Fortune, but an outlawed son of Alpine! I thank you for your advice, Paul; but return to Portnellan, and get food to restore your wasted strength. I will trust to the kind God above us," he added, uncovering his head, and looking upward, "to Him and to my father's sword, rather than to a voice from hell! To-night I cross the hills to Inversnaid, where my poor boy Ronald and my patrimony are alike kept from me by these Saxon intruders. Coll, Greumoch, MacAleister, and the rest are to follow me with five hundred men. We shall gather at the burn foot, where it flows into Loch Lomond, on the third night from this. Sharp war brings sure peace; and ere the sun of the next day shines upon the mountains, I shall cock my bonnet on the ruins of Inversnaid, or lie low on the heather as death can lay me!"

With these words Rob and Paul Crubach parted.

The latter turned away with tottering steps to seek the farmhouse of Portnellan, where Helen MacGregor, with her boys, Hamish and Duncan, were to wait the issue of the attack upon the king's fort and barrack; while Rob threw his target on his shoulder, and lithely and agilely descended the precipitous ladder in the rocks, and alone, as night was closing, sought the road to Callendar.